Reducing Radiation Damage With Ginger & Lemon Balm

By: Dr. Michael Greger, Director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at the Humane Society of the United States.

The German Medical Association finally just apologized for the profession’s role in the Nazi atrocities, 65 years after 20 physicians stood trial in Nuremberg. During the trial, the Nazi doctors argued that their experiments were not unlike previous studies by researchers in the United States, like Dr. Strong’s injection of prisoners with the plague. Nazi Docs were hung; Dr. Strong, went on to Harvard. And we were just getting started. The few examples the Nazis cited were nothing compared to what the American medical establishment started doing after Nuremburg. After all prisoners are much cheaper than chimpanzees.

Much attention has focused on our cold war radiation experiments, which remained classified for decades. Declassification, the American Energy Commission warned, they would have a very poor effect on the public, because they described experiments performed on human subjects, including the actual injection of plutonium into the body. Subjects like Mr.Cade, a 53 “colored male” who got in a car accident and ended up in the hospital—great! Let’s inject him with plutonium.

Who else is powerless besides patients? How about kids, at the Fernald School for the mentally retarded in Waltham, Massachusetts who were fed radioactive isotopes in their breakfast cereal. Despite the Pentagon’s insistence that these were the “only feasible means” of developing ways to protect people from radiation, researchers have since come up with a few ways that don’t violate the Nuremburg code, which states the only time doctors are allowed to do experiments that may kill or disable people if they themselves are willing to sign up as experimental subjects as well.

One way is to study cells in a petri dish. The protective effect of Zingerone against radiation-induced genetic damage and cell death in human white blood cells. What is zingerone? It’s a phytonutrient found in cooked ginger root. You blast cells with some gamma rays and you get less DNA damage and fewer free radicals when add ginger phytonutrients. They even compared it to the leading drug injected into people to protect them from radiation sickness and found the ginger compound to be 150 times more powerful. And without the serious side effects of the drug itself.

They conclude that it’s an inexpensive natural product that may protect against radiation-induced damage. In fact lots of different plant-products have been found to be protective in vitro against radiation damage by a whole variety of mechanisms. After all, plants have been utilized since time immemorial for curing diseases, so they started screening plants and also found radiation-protective benefits from other plants one can find at grocery stores: garlic, turmeric, goji berries, mint leaves but this is all just on cells in a test tube. None had actually been tested in actual people, until now.

How are you going to find people exposed to radiation you can test stuff on? Well, aside from pilots, another group that suffers inordinate radiation exposure is the hospital workers that run the X-ray machines, who have been found to suffer chromosomal damage as a result, compared to other hospital staff, and higher levels of oxidative stress on their bodies. Although X-rays can damage DNA directly, much of the damage is caused by the free radicals generated by the radiation.

So, they asked radiology staff to drink two cups a day of lemon balm tea a for a month, an herbal tea known to have high levels of antioxidants as I showed in one of my favorite videos, Antioxidants in a Pinch. So what happened? The level of antioxidant enzymes in their bloodstream went up and the level of free radical damage went down, leading to the conclusion that oral administration of lemon balm tea may be helpful for the protection of the radiology staff against radiation-induced oxidative stress and improve antioxidant defense system, especially enzymatic defense, due to its antioxidant properties. And if that’s the reason that practically any plant should fit the bill. So know that as you’re sucking on some crystalized ginger to prevent travel sickness on some airplane, little did you know that you may be protecting yourself from the cosmic radiation at that altitude as well.

About Michael Greger M.D.Michael Greger, M.D., is a physician, author, and internationally recognized professional speaker on a number of important public health issues. Dr. Greger has lectured at the Conference on World Affairs, the National Institutes of Health, and the International Bird Flu Summit, testified before Congress, appeared on The Dr. Oz Show and The Colbert Report, and was invited as an expert witness in defense of Oprah Winfrey at the infamous “meat defamation” trial. Currently Dr. Greger proudly serves as the Director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at the Humane Society of the United States.

Comments

Radiation is very deceitful, so even if you are not seeing the damage it is happening. I had the six week stint in 1999. They tattoo the target but it doesn’t really work that way. I had no radiation to,the left breast but this July had a recurrence. I had a left mastectomy. The cancer was contained but the surgery site did not heal. Did reparative surgery last Tuesday. The cause of not healing….radiation damage to tissue 16 years ago. So do everything you can to give your body the gift of healing.

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